The morning sun pooled soft and golden across Elysium’s floorboards, catching on specks of cinnamon dust still drifting from the tea bar.

A record spun low in the corner—Mazzy Star warbled behind the hiss of something faintly magical steeping in the back.

Veronica sat cross-legged on the reading nook couch, flipping through a worn recipe book bound in cracked leather and blue thread.

“We’re out of static lace,” she said absently, licking her finger and turning a page that tried to bite her. “And we’re nearly out of gossamer thread, which—before either of you says anything—I know we can’t substitute with spider silk again. Last time the tea tried to sing.”

From the far wall, a lazy voice drawled,

“That was one time. And she was in perfect pitch.”

Juniper was stretched across the rug in a pile of velvet and attitude. With a sigh like thunder under his breath, he shifted—wings folding, body expanding, a flicker of gold and smoke settling into something tall, lean, and human-shaped.

He sat up slowly, ruffling his curls, amber eyes half-lidded, grinning like he’d just thought of something wicked and wasn't quite done enjoying it yet.

Juniper always looked like someone who didn’t fully belong to this plane of existence. Because, truthfully, he didn’t. Demons rarely did.

“We could just close early,” he said, stretching like a cat. “Pretend the ingredients delivered themselves. Maybe get pizza. Maybe don’t almost die this time.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Veronica said, not looking up.

Near the front window, Sable glinted.

She didn’t speak much in her Pinto form. Her headlights flickered once, the engine giving the softest purr—approval, readiness, the kind of sound that made the floorboards hold their breath.

Then, with a shimmering hum, the air beneath her shimmered. The Pinto lifted—hovered for a breath. Then shrunk slowly, impossibly, until it slipped beneath the backroom curtain like a dream folding itself into shadow.

Two heartbeats later, she emerged into the room—tall, poised, human.

Sable wore her black leather jacket stitched with constellations, sharp cheekbones, lips painted the color of secrets. Her eyes gleamed like chrome before dusk.

“I’ll start the satchel,” she said simply.

Veronica snapped the recipe book shut.

“Field trip,” she declared. “Bags, boots, and bribery-ready smiles.”

Juniper smirked.

“Do I need to charm anyone?”

“Only if you get bored.”

“So... immediately.”

The satchel already humming with portal hunger. She snapped her fingers once, and the sigils beneath their feet bloomed open.

The portal opened with a sigh and a sneeze—Juniper’s fault—dropped them gently into a forest made of embroidery.

The world unraveled with a sound like ribbon being pulled through time.

They arrived in a forest made entirely of lace—spiderweb trees, stitchwork vines, and soft breezes that carried the scent of pressed linens and forgotten lullabies.

The sky was paper-colored. The ground was velvet-soft.

“I forgot how weird this place smells,” Juniper muttered, crinkling his nose.

“It smells like antique hope,” Veronica whispered, delighted.

They wound through the lace-thick woods until they reached a shop grown directly from a tree trunk—twisted, hollow, with a door made of uncut quilt squares stitched together by time.

Inside the air shimmered with tiny scissors, snipping tension out of the silence.

The Threadkeeper, an ageless creature stood behind a counter of stacked bobbins and floating thimbles. They wore a robe of unfinished tapestries and had no visible face—only a gently glowing seam.

“Payment?” the Threadkeeper rasped.

Veronica placed a memory on the counter—a childhood ache, sealed in glass. It shook, cracked, and vanished.

The Threadkeeper nodded and handed her a spool of gossamer thread spun from spider-moonlight and sleep-spoken wishes.

Juniper leaned over her shoulder.

“Can I get one too?”

“You’ll unravel reality.”

“Fine. I’ll make my own.”

“Please don’t,” Sable and Veronica said in unison.

They left with two skeins of gossamer thread woven from moon-silk promises, careful not to snag them on the doorway.

They stepped out of the Threadkeeper’s Hollow and into the soft light of the in-between—a suspended stretch of golden fog stitched together with floating thread bridges and flickering signs that pointed in directions no compass could track. The ground wasn’t quite solid.

The air smelled faintly of honey and daffodils, like the moment just before a spell catches.

Juniper was already walking backward along the bridge, arms folded behind his head, boots stomping on thread that somehow held his weight.

“So,” he said, “pizza after the Hour Market?”

“Absolutely not,” Veronica replied. “Last time you traded your receipt for half a prophecy and I had to cancel three appointments and a date.”

“You didn’t even like him.”

“I liked his teeth.”

Sable walked ahead of them both, calm and unbothered, her boots clicking lightly on the suspended path as the next portal shimmered into view—an archway made of ticking clock hands and citrus branches, just beginning to bloom open.

“We’ve got five minutes until the window aligns,” she called over her shoulder.

Veronica pulled her flannel sleeves up and adjusted the satchel at her hip. It purred faintly.

“Plenty of time for poor decisions,” she said.

Juniper grinned.

“I make excellent mistakes.”

The portal bloomed with a soft shiver of light.

They stepped through—laughing, bickering, and carrying moon-silk promises into the next impossibility.

This portal took them to a floating bazaar suspended in time—each stall locked in its own second, ticking forward only when spoken to. Colors glowed too brightly. The scent of citrus and lightning hung in the air.

Vendors offered things like bottled arguments, clock dust, and fractured lullabies.

They stopped at a booth shaped like a cuckoo clock, ticking slowly. Manned by a girl with no shadow. She wore an apron stitched with pocket watches and spoke backwards until Veronica handed her a sunflower seed that bloomed mid-air.

“One spool of static lace,” the girl said in perfect clarity, “The warmth of your name, spoken by someone who meant it.”

“Two yards.,” Veronica asked, politely.

Veronica hesitated. Then placed her palm on the counter.

There was a hum—soft and sharp. Something curled, then vanished.

The vendor handed over a coil of crackling silver thread that sparked gently when held.

“She always knows the dramatic trades,” Juniper whispered.

“Says the demon with jazz boots.”

“They’re charmed. For charisma.”

“You mean theft.”

Sable rolled her eyes and turned toward the portal forming just behind them—a doorway stitched into the scent of orange peel and ozone.

“We good?” she asked.

Veronica tucked the lace into her satchel.

“We’re golden.”

Veronica stepped over the threshold, satchel fuller, eyes stormier. They stepped through the final seam of air, back into the cozy scent of beeswax and book leather.

The shop greeted them like a favorite quilt—soft, familiar, a little crooked in the best way.

Veronica hung the satchel on its pedestal.

Juniper immediately made for the tea bar. Sable paused by the window, eyes narrowed slightly, as if scanning the sky for something she couldn’t name.

“You think we have time to restock the spell wall before the next weirdness?” Juniper called.

“Define weird,” Veronica answered.

“Something explodes. Someone cries. A customer walks in claiming to be their own grandmother.”

“Ten minutes, tops,” Sable murmured.

The three of them laughed—loud and easy—in a shop at the edge of wonder, with one foot already slipping into the stars.